Girtha Rising — Part 5 – Remembering
This story is a narrative reconstruction inspired by family history, place, and imagination.
Girtha was alone sitting with Edgar at the funeral parlor. It was their last night together. She didn’t want to imagine her husband in the ground covered with the cold earth, his twinkling eyes shut, his infectious laughter quiet forever. She sat just wanting to feel his comforting presence one last night.
Memories of loss and fear sat beside her instead. Playing outside in Kooskia, Idaho like a mountain goat. She could see her mother’s stooped shoulders leaning over the table with her head in her hand and shoulders heaving. Her papa with his hand in his pockets shuffling his feet back and forth. He wasn’t looking at her mama. Just looking out the window. Something was dreadful wrong.
Girtha had been born in the Rocky Mountains in the family birthing room. It was the only home she had ever known. She was heartbroken when Ira told the family they couldn’t pay the taxes.
“But Papa, you’re an original settler! You proved up the claim, how could we lose the land? Papa! What did you do?”
“Aw honey, this land just ain’t no good for farming. Cain’t git no crops in the short season up here in the mountains. It’s just too far up. Mighty fine for digging out copper or a few taters but takes more ‘n I gots in in me to make it pay in corn or wheat.”
Her eldest sister Dolly piped in “Like it was in Washington and Kansas? Doesn’t seem to me you’ve never had much luck farming anywhere pa. Mebbe you ain’t even cut out to be a farmer.”
“Don’t you sass me, girl, you ain’t so big that I cain’t whip some sense into you. By golly I won’t stand fer it I won’t be disrespected by no clucken hens in in my yard, no siree not in this here barnyard!”
“Aw pa, hold your horses.” retorted Dolly “You ain’t whipping no one around here. You cain’t even grow corn to keep your land. I should a known better than ta trust any of yer high falutin plans. I should a know better I say.”
Losing her home had been the worst thing that had ever happened to young Girtha. It was a hard scrabble hand to mouth existence. The younger children didn’t realize they were poor. Everyone around them was scrimping and saving to prove up their homestead claims. Families grew the food they needed for winter storage. Staples of flour, molasses, salt and beans were shipped in for the homesteaders. The growing season was too short to even get a good crop of grain very often.
The land was good for growing Irish potatoes. Cabbages and turnips filled the root celler. Girtha grew up gathering fruit, putting by vegetables, growing chickens. They spent so much time focused on getting food ready for winter, they didn’t have any left over to ruminate on poverty.
Mama made a lot of soup for her family of six. Girtha was fifth in line and always felt lost in the gaggle of sisters. Her only brother Fred was the oldest and barely paid any attention to another little sister. It was her older sisters that took care of young Girtha. Mama was always so tired, sighing and stirring the soup, trying to figure out how to make vegetables for four turn into food for eight.
Sitting in the funeral home one last time with Edgar, Girtha was filled with memories of the covered wagon filled to the brim with everything they could fit in to it.
“There ain’t room for everything you love Girtha. No use fussin over somethin that cain’t be changed. Just gotta get used it girl, you just gotta keep going on. Now put that down and git along t’ run after the wagon.”
They were leaving home and moving somewhere in Oregon where papa could be working. A place with jobs for a man willing to work hard. That was the part that had troubled young Girtha and she smiled wryly remembering her hapless-go-lucky papa.
Ira was a talker and a storyteller. Any job site he was at, it wasn’t long before he had a number of better ideas about how they could “work smarter, boys! Work smarter, not harder!” Trouble was the boys did indeed keep working and Ira kept talking, the bosses labeled him a shiftless trouble maker and Ira would be back at Fannie’s kitchen table explaining that he had never seen much opportunity for a man of fine intellect getting anywhere working in a place like….well like anywhere Ira ever had to set about working.
He was always busy though. He would be writing for hours or tinkering with a new invention to really save some labor this time. Ira knew all his neighbors and lent a hand even when they would have preferred not so much help or even any of his help.
Girtha slowly came to learn that her papa wasn’t much help getting flour or beans for mama either.
Sometimes young Girtha would walk with mama to the general store to help her tote the provisions back home. She remembered the cold pit in her stomach when the storekeeper wouldn’t let her mama have any more beans on credit.
“Please, don’t shame me in front of my girl. We jist need five pounds of your second quality to put on the account and Ira will be in t’ take care of it all fer you.”
“I heard that from you last time Fannie, n’ Ira never came to the store to make good or even pay down on whatcha rung up already. Charity cases got t’ be approved by the council. If Ira ain’t gonna provide for his wimmin and children, you gotta go there Mrs. Patrick.”
Charity cases! Girtha stood close to her mama, reaching to clutch on to her hand. She held her tongue, but wanted to tell that stupid storekeeper that the Patrick’s didn’t need anyone’s dang charity. They were homesteaders with a proved up claim, so there!
Now they were living in a company shack and couldn’t keep the cold out with the thin walls. The soup had gotten thinner and thinner. Mama just sat there staring at the wall most of the time. Without her home, mama just stopped caring.
Girtha didn’t want to be like her mama. She would not give up. Edgar had made sure their home was free and clear. He understood her deep fear of losing the home she loved. Girtha tightened in her core and promised herself that she would not give in and stare at the walls until the landlord came by to move the family out of camp.
She stood up and placed her hands on the closed casket.
“I’ll tend to our cherry tree darling.”
←Part 4 — Shifting Foundations
→Part 6 — The Brotherhood
